


A Storybook Story

by fardareismai



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), The Princess Bride - William Goldman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Princess Bride Fusion, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up Together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-06-08 17:43:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6866641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is true love.  Do you think this happens every day?"<br/>"Not one couple in a century has that chance, no matter what the storybooks say."</p>
<p>How Emma Swan and her Farm Boy came to fall in love with one another.</p>
<p>A CS Princess Bride AU, because the world needed another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **In honour of tonight's season finale, I offer you a story I've been sitting on for a little while. It is (as you may guess) loosely based on the beginning of Princess Bride.**
> 
> **Someday there might be more of it, for the rest of the movie, but not today. Not yet.**
> 
> **So, happy finale, my Captain Swan lovers. Emma, Snow, David, Killian, and anyone else who might think to show up in this story don't belong to me any more than Buttercup, Westley, or any of those characters. I've just sailed in and stolen them away for my own adventures.**
> 
> **Just call me a pirate!**
> 
> **(The quotes in italics at the beginning of this chapter and any subsequent chapters that might eventually come into existence are from the song Storybook Love by Mark Knopfler which plays over the credits at the end of The Princess Bride film)**

_Come my love, I'll tell you a tale_

_Of a boy and girl and their love story._

Emma Swan pushed herself up on her toes, stretching up as high as she could to scrabble against the wall of the stable. Her saddle was hung on a different peg from usual, and she could barely brush the bottom with the tips of her fingers and knew she would never manage to get it down.

She dropped back on her heels and frowned petulantly at the wall. Her father's saddle was on her usual peg, but it was far too big for her pony, and she was too small to ride her father's big gelding.

Someday, she promised herself, she would be big enough and a good enough rider to ride any horse she ever met.

In the meantime, she wanted to take her pony out for a ride and needed her bloody saddle!

Emma flushed slightly and glanced around as though her father or mother could have heard her curse in her thoughts. Neither of them were there and, of course, neither could read minds.

There _was_ someone there, she noticed for the first time. Skulking in one of the empty horse stalls was the lad her father had hired a few weeks before to help on their small farm. She'd yet to hear him speak a word, though she thought he must talk to her father sometimes. He must have been the one to put her saddle on the wrong peg, however, which meant he would be able to lift it down. He was a few years older than her, and several inches taller- skinny and lanky with it too.

"Farm Boy," she called, not knowing his name, "help me fetch down my saddle. I want to ride."

The lad stepped out from the horse stall, a sour expression on his face. It was hard to tell what colour his eyes were, as his jet-black fringe hung down in front of them, but Emma could see that they were narrowed and his mouth was pressed into a thin line of dislike.

"I'm not a farm boy," were the first words she ever heard him speak in a petulant, whiny voice, with an accent she couldn't quite place.

Emma turned to face him fully, crossing her arms over her scrawny chest and raising her chin to glare at him as she had occasionally seen her mother do to vendors who tried to cheat them in the marketplace.

"This is a farm," she said with ruthless logic, "and you are a boy."

"Does that make you a farm girl then?" he sneered.

"Yes," Emma said simply, though she could tell he'd meant it as an insult. "But I won't always be. I'm going to marry a prince someday."

"Well I won't always be a farm boy either. I'm going to be a sailor someday."

Emma was surprised and curious. "Are you going to be a fisherman?" she asked, wondering why he'd work on her father's farm instead of apprentice himself on a boat if that was what he wanted.

His face screwed up in disgust. "No. As soon as I'm of age, I'm going to join the Navy like my brother."

"You haven't got a brother!"

"I have," he said, starting to look annoyed again. "And he's the best man in the world, Liam."

"He isn't," Emma argued, suddenly willing to accept the existence of said brother, if only to deny his ranking among men. "My father is."

"He isn't!" the boy shouted.

"He is! He took you in, didn't he?"

The lad frowned at that, annoyed but unable to deny her logic. He opened his mouth a few times as though looking for an argument, and closed it again.

"You can't marry a prince," he said, finally, changing the subject. "They only marry princesses."

"And who's to say I'm not a princess in disguise?" Emma asked, her seven-year-old's imagination somewhat unclear on the concepts of royal lineage being passed only through the blood.

"Princesses are beautiful," the boy said simply, "and you don't even comb your hair. _And_ you've got freckles."

Emma gasped. She considered that a blow well below the belt and went looking for something equally cruel.

"You can talk about people not combing their hair! And besides, who says the Navy would take _you_ then? You're too skinny. And you're short." He was taller than she was, but he was slightly shorter than most of the boys his age in the village. "They'd put you off the boat in the middle of the ocean and you'd be picked up by pirates."

"You take that back!" His face was suddenly suffused with angry colour and he had lost all control of his emotions. The lad was furious with her. "You take it back, I would never turn pirate!"

"I won't!" Emma said, defiant. "Pirate!"

That was the final straw, and the young boy reached down and threw a handful of manure-covered straw at her, splattering the muck across the entire front of her gown. Emma stood for a long moment, her mouth open wide in absolute disbelief as her face flushed a hot red.

"How dare you?" she shouted.

Twenty minutes later, Emma's father entered the stables to find chaos. Both Emma and the new hand were covered head-to-toe in horse shit and were screaming like banshees at one another, calling each other names ('pirate' and 'princess' seeming, oddly, to be the most common). Their shrieking was upsetting the horses who were beginning to stamp and worry, but the two children were far too busy to notice that they might soon be trampled. The lad was pulling on Emma's messy yellow hair, and Emma appeared to be trying to bite him.

David said nothing, just strode into the barn and pulled the lad off his daughter by back of his shirt. He then grabbed Emma's elbow, pulled her off the floor of the stable, and marched both children out of the barn without a word- no need to disturb the horses further.

Once they were out of the barn, David released the two miscreants and stood back, arms folded, waiting for an explanation.

Both of them stood in stunned silence for a long moment, and then, as though they had rehearsed it, they both began to speak at once.

"She said my brother-"

"He wouldn't-"

"She called me-"

"He threw-"

David raised a single finger which silenced the pair immediately. Neither would look at him, nor at each other. Both were studying the toes of their boots.

"I do not want to know what happened," he said, shaking his head. He turned to the lad. "Don't hit girls, young man, it's not gentlemanly." He turned to his daughter. "Don't antagonize people."

David had an idea of who had started the argument- the lad had been sullen but biddable, and David thought he wouldn't have sought an argument with Emma. Emma, on the other hand, was far too opinionated for her own good and had absolutely no compunctions about speaking her mind.

She was like her mother that way.

"You will both be punished for fighting and for disturbing the horses. You," he said to the lad, "will muck out the horse stalls. You," he said, to Emma, "will polish every bit of tack. I want to see my face shining in them by morning, do you understand?"

"Yes, Papa."

"Aye, Sir."

"And, in addition to these chores, you shall neither of you have pudding with your supper tonight. My wife has been making an apple pie today, but you'll not have any."

Both children finally looked up at him, horror in their eyes and David had to bite back a smile.

"And," he continued before either could voice the objections he could see in their faces, "as you will both be in the stable together, if you fight and disturb the horses again, you shan't have pudding all week, is that understood."

The pair glared at one-another out of the corners of their eyes mistrustfully, but nodded meekly to him.

David nodded, and watched the pair of them walk into the stable together, silent and sullen. They might kill each other, he thought to himself, amused, but at least he didn't have to share any of Snow's pie with them tonight.

Thirty minutes later, Emma's hands were smarting. The leather polish was harsh on her skin and her arm muscles were already beginning to ache, but the work had brought everything back into perspective, and she was beginning to feel a bit guilty about how she'd behaved.

"Farm Boy?" she called, knowing he was there, even if she didn't know exactly where he was.

"I have a name, you know," he said, though he didn't sound quite so annoyed as he had before.

"I know, that was what I was going to ask you. What is it?"

There was silence in the stable for a long moment, broken only by the scrape of his shovel, the splash of her water, and the quiet, contented sounds of the horses around them.

"It's Killian."

Emma nodded, though she thought he couldn't see her.

"If you did become a pirate, Killian, you'd be a good one," she said to the saddle she was polishing. "But you'll be good in the navy too. I know you will. Just as good as your brother."

The sounds of his shovel stopped and she turned to see that he was looking at her from the entrance to one of the stalls. He'd pushed his hair away from his sweaty face, and for the first time she could see that his eyes were as blue as the sea on a cloudless day.

"And you'll be a beautiful princess, Emma."

~?~?~?~?~

"Farm Boy," Emma said, knowing it would annoy him, "I need to go to the well. Come with me and help me carry the buckets back."

Killian looked up from where he was chopping wood, one dark eyebrow arched higher than the other, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.

Emma bit back her own smile. "Please," she added, as though an afterthought.

He grinned, and she couldn't help but smile back- his smile was like that. He buried his hatchet in the chopping block and stood straight to give her an elaborate bow.

"As my princess wishes," he said, looking up at her with those sparkling blue eyes.

Emma couldn't hold back her laugh. She picked up one of the buckets and shoved it into his chest, knocking the wind out of him, even as he laughed.

"Come on then, _Pirate_ ," she said, shaking her head and leading the way.

They walked together companionably through the town. The pair of them were a regular sight to the citizens of Storybrooke- the dark-haired lad and the golden-haired girl. They were a handsome pair. She was still young and coltish at 14, but the promise of her bones had begun to show through her skin the previous year. He, at 17, was beginning to look the man he would very soon be, his shoulders broad and his carriage erect. The girls of the village were always sighing and swooning after him, but he seemed always indifferent to them as Emma was to the lads who looked at her with a covetous eye.

As they approached the end of the village, both their eyes were caught by the sight of a naval ship at the docks. Emma felt Killian stiffen beside her and she paused to look at it.

"Is it his?" she asked, having no eye for ships and being, therefore, unable to recognize Liam's vessel without seeing the name painted on the side.

Killian shook his head and grinned down at her. "Can't you count? That ship has three sails, Jewel only has the one. That's a Man o' War. Someone important is here."

"Oh?"

"Maybe it's your prince, come to fall desperately in love with you and whisk you away to his castle to make you his bride."

Emma snorted, an unladylike sound that always made her mother sigh. Killian had never let her forget her foolish boast on the day they'd become friends.

"I seem to recall being told once that princes marry princesses, not farm girls with freckles."

"You don't have freckles anymore," Killian said, tapping the end of her nose which had, until she was 11, been covered in freckles but was now as pale and smooth as fresh cream.

"I'm still a farm girl though," Emma said, pragmatically, wrinkling her nose under his finger.

"What do farm girls do then?" Killian asked, resuming their meander toward the well in the village.

Emma shrugged. "Marry the local shephard and have a dozen babies, if my mother has her way," she sighed.

Killian raised his eyebrows in surprise. "And if you have yours?"

A slow smile dawned across Emma's face, and her green eyes went dreamy. "Join a circus and learn to fly on the trapeze or to ride a horse while standing on it."

Killian laughed. He couldn't help it. Emma wasn't much of one for reading herself, but he was, and every time he read a new book and told her the story, the adventures therein lit her eyes. A week ago she'd wanted to become a highwayman. A week before that, a warrior queen. A week before a pirate of the high seas.

Emma blinked at his laugh, coming back from her imagination, and gave him a rueful smile.

"It's not very likely, is it?" she asked.

"I think, my dear Princess, that you could be anything you want to be, whether a wife or a warrior, and you will be brilliant at it."

Emma grinned up at him and the pair of them walked in silence together for a brief time.

Suddenly, she spoke again, clearly having been thinking on their conversation. "I don't _want_ to marry!"

Killian blinked in surprise, looking down at her. "Not at all?" he asked, an odd note in his voice.

"No," she said, stubbornly. "Well…" she began again, suddenly sounding less sure. "I might want to marry if… if…"

"If?" he prompted.

"If it were True Love. Like in your stories. If I could find something like that… I'd marry him right away, prince or pauper… or pirate, if I could." She glanced up at him as though to gauge his reaction to this last addition, but his face remained carefully blank, his eyes on the road ahead of them. She sighed. "But not one couple in a century has that chance, no matter what the storybooks say."

"You think not?" Killian asked, that strange note still in his voice.

"Do you think that True Love happens every day?"

Killian shrugged. "Perhaps not, but I think one should have hope. Otherwise, what's the point?

Emma laughed, a merry sound that broke the tension of the serious conversation. "Oh, I have hope, Killian. I _hope_ that someday you're reading about _my_ exploits in your storybooks. What do you think of that?"

"The heroes in the storybooks always find their true loves though."

"Even the pirates and the bandits?"

"They do if they're the heroes," Killian said with a shrug. "The hero always gets a happy ending."

"How can a pirate be a hero?" she asked, bumping her shoulder into his as though she thought he were teasing her.

"Perhaps he only turns pirate for love of his brother or his lady or in defiance of an unjust king. Or maybe the bandit only steals from the rich to give to the poor, something like that. Those are always the best stories though- when the hero fights the good fight against impossible odds. And then he meets the love of his life, who either helps him see the error of his ways or wants the adventure as badly as he does. And they always live happily ever after- whatever it is that makes them happy."

The pair of them had stopped in the path and turned toward each other as he spoke. Emma could scarcely breathe. Killian's eyes on her were more intensely blue than she had ever seen them before, and he seemed to be trying to convey something to her without words. She couldn't put a name to it, but her heart hammered away in her chest as though to escape its cage and make itself known to him.

Suddenly Killian turned away, moving up the path with a quick stride forcing Emma to run to catch back up with him. They made the rest of the journey in silence.

When they finally arrived at the well, Killian chivalrously took the buckets and began to lower them into the water as Emma leaned against the well and looked out over the bay where the great ship still lay at anchor.

"Only one more year and then you'll leave me to go off and have your adventures with the navy," she said softly.

The squeak of the pulley on the well hesitated for half a heartbeat before continuing as steadily as before.

"I'm not leaving you, Emma," Killian said, quietly. "Storybrooke is my home. I'll always come back- like Liam does."

"We scarcely see Liam three times a year. Is that all I'll ever see you again?"

"He's here nearly a month when the stormy season comes. Is that not enough?"

"Six weeks out of the year we see him," she said, her back still to him. "Six weeks, and there are all those other ports of call. Places where he meets other people. Places where he meets women. Who is to say that those places aren't finer, the women lovelier, and that someday he… you… might not come back to Storybrooke at all?"

"Emma…"

She turned to face him then, a smile on her face that didn't quite meet her eyes. "Just promise me that when you go you'll write me of all your adventures. It won't be quite like when you tell me the stories from your books, but it will be close. Promise me?" This last was said without the smile, only a note of pure pleading in her voice.

"As you wish, Princess."

~?~?~?~?~

Liam managed to schedule his leave to coincide with his younger brother's 18th birthday and the subsequent commencement of his military career.

He came bearing wine from distant ports and gifts for everyone in the family, not just Killian. To David he brought a bottle of dark amber liquor that smelled hotly of spice and burned sugar that Liam told them was called rum. To Snow he brought an ivory whistle carved whimsically like a thrush, which gave that same bird's call when blown into. To Emma he brought a jade comb, just the colour of her eyes to wear in her hair and a book of tales from a far-off land to read and dream of.

To Killian, however, he brought two things. The first he brought him were his papers of commission to a ship called The Hood.

Killian looked up at his brother in surprise. "Will I not be joining you on the Jewel?" he asked, sounding suddenly younger than 18 and frightened with it.

Liam laughed. "No, little brother, you must have your own adventures! If you remained on the Jewel of the Realm, each promotion would be called favouritism and you'd never make your mark. Captain Robin of the Hood is a good man. He'll treat you fairly."

The second gift was larger and bulkier, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. Killian took the knife from beside his plate to cut through the string and then stared open-mouthed at what had been revealed as the paper fell away.

It was a set of naval whites that gleamed up at him in the rushlight of the small cottage, finer clothing than Killian had ever owned before. Finer fabric than any person in the room, save for Liam, had ever seen.

Killian reached out a hand to stroke the Ensign's insignia sewn to the sleeve and carefully folded to the top. He looked up at his brother, his mouth hanging open.

"Go put them on," Liam said, smiling gently at his brother, "I want to see how you look in them."

Still speechless, Killian gathered the bundle and slipped silent from the cottage to his own room above the stable.

As Liam and her parents fell into conversation, Emma remained quiet as she tried to slow her heart in her chest.

She'd always known, from the first day she met Killian, that he wanted to join the Navy like his brother- that he would leave her someday. Yet, in all those years it it always seemed distant and ethereal, something she needn't worry about immediately, until she sat on the eve of his desertion. For some reason the thin blue stripe of his Ensign's insignia on the top of Liam's packet had brought it all home for her: her best friend, her Killian, was leaving.

Emma's mother, father, and Liam suddenly stopped talking and Emma knew that behind her, at the door, Killian stood in his new uniform. She wondered if she could bring herself to turn and look at him, and yet she could do no other- he had always been there for her and so she must be there for him now.

She turned, and there he stood, a vision in white and blue.

He might have been a stranger. Surely her Farm Boy, her Pirate, her Killian had never been so tall, or so proud, or so old. He looked, she realized, like what he was: a man grown. A servant of his king. An honourable man.

She had known from the beginning that he would leave her. What she hadn't known was that he would take her heart with him

Liam's voice boomed out, startling Emma from her thoughts. "You look like a man, little brother," he said, and his voice was thick with emotion. "I'm proud of you."

Killian's face lit like a candle flame, and Emma's heart twisted to see it. He had always wanted to be like his brother. Liam was the most important person in the world to him.

But he turned, then, to her, his eyes lit just as bright as they had been when Liam had complimented him. "What do you think?" he asked.

Looking at him, she realized the truth, and wondered that she could have been so blind for so long. He loved her. Had loved her for years. He'd never spared a glance for the village girls because he'd only ever been looking at her.

And, she realized with dawning amazement, she loved him back. She did not want one of the village boys or even a far-off and imaginary prince because the only boy (the only _man_ , she corrected, as he still stood before her in his uniform) she'd ever wanted had been standing beside her the entire time.

She wondered if it had started for him back in the stable as he'd thrown horse shit at her.

It was a heart-stopping, hair-raising, impossible revelation. She was in love with her best friend and he loved her back. He hadn't said it, not yet, but she knew as sure as she knew her own name and that the sun would rise in the East, that he did love her.

Surely it must change everything.

And yet, as he continued to stand under her scrutiny, growing ever more uncomfortable until he reached his right hand to scratch behind his ear as he always did when nervous, she realized that it changed absolutely nothing.

A man of the King's Navy he might be now, but always and forever he would be her Farm Boy.

"I still don't know what the Navy will do with you. You're still skinny and short, but I suppose they'll find something."

"Emma!" her mother cried, shocked at her daughter's rudeness, but Liam's laughter drowned her out, and the tension that had been growing steadily in Killian's shoulders suddenly vanished.

When everyone had calmed down and Killian had rejoined them at the table, Liam gave him one more sideways look.

"I've another gift for you, brother."

Killian sputtered at this largesse. "You can't, Liam. It's too much!"

"I can, and I have, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it, little brother, so calm yourself." He rose and crossed the room to where his bags leaned against the wall and rummaged for a moment before withdrawing something long and narrow.

It was a sword in its scabbard and he offered it to his brother laid across his two palms.

"It's not new, like the whites," Liam said, sounding almost apologetic. "It was mine from when I first joined up."

The handle was brass rather than gold, and it didn't shine so much as glow, but when Killian pulled the blade from its sheath, the steel glimmered, honed to a lethal edge and well-kept.

"I… thank you, Liam," Killian stuttered. "It's… thank you."

Liam smiled. "I'm proud of you, Killian. More than I can say. It's a good thing you're doing, fighting. It's important. But more important is knowing what you're fighting for." Liam's eyes slipped for just a moment to Emma. "You do know that, don't you? What you're fighting for?"

Killian looked over at her as well. "I do, Liam. I know."

"Good man. I think it's time we ate then."

And so they did. Emma's mother had gone all out making potatoes and beef and onions and carrots and squashes and bread and they all ate heartily. Liam opened the wine and it flowed to everyone but Emma who was allowed only a thimbleful. Her stomach was tied too much in knots to appreciate the wine or the food, however. All she could think of was how Killian's thigh was pressed tight to hers under the table and how his shoulder bumped hers every few minutes as he maneuvered his fork and knife.

She had to say something to him before he left in the morning, but she did not know what.

Snow White brought out a great cake for Killian at the end of the meal, and everyone was served a large slice. Emma took one bite but found that she could scarcely swallow it and set her fork down immediately.

Killian turned to her and frowned. Her mother, father, and his brother were talking amongst themselves and did not notice the two young people at all.

"Are you all right, Emma?" Killian asked, reaching out for her hand.

Emma jerked her hand away from him before he could touch it, afraid that if he did so, she might just burst into flames there at the table. Killian looked hurt for a moment, but blinked the expression away quickly and drew his hand back into his own lap.

"I need to talk to you, Killian," Emma murmured, glancing around the room. "Alone?"

"As you wish," he said, glancing up as well to her parents and his brother. "Perhaps we could take a walk together?"

"Yes!" Emma said, grasping at this suggestion with relief. She stood suddenly and took his elbow, practically dragging him from the table and out the door, neither one noticing the amusement on the faces of their elders.

Once out the front door, Emma took off across her father's land, Killian following in her wake, practically running to keep up with her. It was a dark, moonless night, and their way was lit only by the stars, but Emma moved as though she could see in the dark. It was her home, and she knew it well.

Finally, after some minutes, Emma stopped, and Killian stopped beside her, taking a deep breath. He deduced, from the smell of horses, that they were by the stables, and he smiled, knowing that she could not see him. He had always considered the stables to be _their_ place, for that had been where it all begun for them so many years ago.

"You promised that you'd write me," she said suddenly, her voice rising from the dark.

"Aye," he answered, surprised. "Every day, if you like, though I'll only be able to send the letters when I reach port. I'll tell you all my adventures, and any story I hear."

"Good," she said, quietly, and then fell silent.

He would write her as often as he could, but it couldn't have been that which had sent her running outside with him. He'd promised her that already, and she had to know that he always kept his promises to her.

"I didn't get you a birthday present," she said, softly.

"You needn't-" he began, but she interrupted him.

"It's your eighteenth birthday, and I didn't get you anything, and I should have. Perhaps it's for the best though, anything I could have gotten for you would have been overshadowed by your brother's gifts. I find that I want to give you something though. Something of mine. Something to keep with you when you leave tomorrow. Would you have it?"

"I'd be honoured, Emma," he said, shocked at how low and thick his voice sounded. The thought of having something of her to keep close to him in the weeks and months when he would not see her? It would be his most prized possession- more precious even than his brother's sword. "It must be something small though," he said, regretful. "I haven't much room in my bag."

"It's… It's not small, but I think it won't take up much room," she said, cryptically.

Before Killian could even begin to suss this out, she was kissing him and his mind was blissfully, impossibly blank for three slow heartbeats as her warm, soft mouth pressed over his.

Then, suddenly, her lips were gone and Killian felt bereft and cold.

"Oh," she said, softly, a bare squeak of sound in the quiet dark.

Killian blinked and wished that he could see her face. She sounded surprised, disappointed, and slightly hurt, if all three could be heard in so little sound. He wondered how she could possibly feel that way when he felt as though he were floating several inches off the ground.

"I'm sorry," she said, and his heart stopped in his chest. She was sorry that she'd kissed him?

"Sorry?" he gasped out.

"I thought… I thought you wanted…" she said, her voice barely a whisper.

"I did! Emma, I do!"

Her voice sounded confused. "But you didn't… move or... "

Suddenly things came clear in a moment. He hadn't moved, completely overwhelmed by her nearness, her kiss. He'd done nothing to show her how badly he'd wanted her to keep kissing him. To kiss him forever.

But, how was he to have known, he wondered.

"I'm sorry, Emma. You caught me by surprise. I've never…"

"Never?" she asked, shocked.

"Gods… don't you know? Since I was ten years old, it's only ever been you!" He reached out and found her face, a pale blotch in the dark, and cupped it in both of his hands. "I never saw anyone else," he said, stroking over her soft, round cheeks with his thumbs. "I never wanted to. I love you."

"I know," she whispered, and he smiled.

"And you?" he asked, leaning closer, not touching, but able to feel the heat of her skin against his lips.

"I love you as well," she whispered, and he could feel her breath over his skin.

"I'm going to kiss you, Emma," he said. "Is that all right?"

"Yes," she whispered, and he caught her acquiescence in his own lips as he took hers.

It was warm and soft and awkward as they bumped noses against each other, and it was perfect as her soft mouth slid against his. Her hands came up into his dark hair, and his slid back into gold and she tasted of her mother's cake and his brother's wine and milk and honey, and she smelled of horse and sheep and the grass of the meadow and her mother's garden.

And when he left the next day, he knew that what she had given him was a talisman against any danger, for what could harm him when he knew what home tasted like?


	2. Chapter 2

_And how he loved her oh-so much_

_And all the charms she did possess_

* * *

 

For a month, Emma waited patiently for Killian's first letter. For a week after she waited, but with less patience. For three days after that, Emma cried, certain that he'd forgotten her. For the rest of that week, Emma cursed Killian's name and swore that if he ever set foot in Storybrooke again, she'd run him through with her father's sword.

One morning, after nearly a week of swearing to herself that she hated Killian Jones and everything about him from his messy black hair, to his brilliant blue eyes, to his big feet on which she'd always stepped when he'd tried to teach her to dance, there was a thick envelope set beside her breakfast plate with her name written in a familiar hand on the front.

Emma stood stock-still, staring at the letter as both parents watched her carefully. She wanted to tear it open and read it immediately- sharing every word with them and glorying in her beloved's words. She wanted to take it and hide it away to read in secret, hoarding Killian's love for her like a miser's gold. She wanted never to open it, but to keep it forever sealed, savouring the infinite possibilities of his words.

A horrible possibility occurred to her, as horrible possibilities always do at only the worst moment. What if his letter did not contain words of love? What if, instead, now that he had left Storybrooke and met new people, seen new ports of call, and had grand adventures, he realized that his attachment to a farm girl in the tiny village in which he had grown up meant nothing in the face of the greater world.

Suddenly, after weeks of waiting and cursing the wait, Emma wanted nothing to do with the letter.

She crossed the room and picked it up from the table, turning toward the fire to throw it to the flames only to have it plucked from her hands just before she did so.

"Don't be ridiculous, Emma," her mother chided. "I'll just hold onto this until you've finished your chores, and then you can read it at your leisure."

Emma stared at her mother in disbelief but Snow White just smiled serenely at her and gestured to the door.

"Go on then. Chores."

As soon as Emma was out of the cottage, however, David turned to his wife, a look of profound worry in his eyes.

"Should we really be encouraging this? The pair of them?"

Snow frowned. "You love Killian," she said, sounding confused.

"As though he were my own son," David confirmed.

"So what's the problem? You don't think he doesn't love her, do you?"

David laughed at the idea. "He has loved her since they were children, pulling each other's hair in the stables and stealing cookies before supper. She's loved him as long, though she was perhaps too young to see it."

"Then I don't understand what the problem is."

He shook his head. "There wasn't any problem when he was here. He might have inherited the farm from me and they would have been close and safe and settled."

"Neither of them wanted that. They're dreamers, the pair of them."

"They're both so young," he said with a sigh. "It would have been bad enough if he'd just been a soldier, but he's a sailor. She'll be alone most of the time. Do we really want her to have that life? Would she really be happy?"

Snow drew a hand comfortingly down his arm, then linked her fingers with his. "She might go with him. It's not unheard of for officer's wives to join their husbands on voyages."

"And you'd be happy with that? How difficult was it to see Killian off? And wouldn't it be a hundred times as hard to send Emma, our only daughter, away as well?"

"I will be happy if she is, and if that's on a ship or in a palace or in a farmer's cottage, so be it. And if it with a shop boy or a sailor or a prince, it won't matter to me in the slightest."

David leaned down and placed a kiss on the top of his wife's head. "You're very sensible," he said, sounding amused.

Snow shrugged, knowing he was teasing her but not minding. "It will be several years before they can marry anyway. Perhaps distance won't make the heart grow fonder and Emma will decide she doesn't love him so much as all that, and will marry one of the village boys instead. Or perhaps the sea won't suit Killian as well as it does Liam, and he'll come home to be a farmer. We have all the time in the world, my dear. There's no need to fret now."

David seemed comforted by this thought, and went out to take care of his own chores and duties about the farm, but Snow White, remaining in the cottage with her work, continued to think on it. The crinkle of the letter in her pocket served as a constant reminder that her daughter's heart was held at the whim of wind and wave.

~?~?~?~?~

The hours of outdoor air and the company of her beloved horses helped clear Emma's head and she was practically vibrating with anticipation when she returned to the cottage.

Snow White gave her daughter an unreadable look as she removed the letter from her pocket, but did not stop her vanishing into her bedroom with it.

Emma tore the envelope open and pulled out the pages of closely-written words with shaking hands. The words blurred and re-formed before her eyes as she trembled, and she set the letter down on the table to read, clenching her hands into fists on the tabletop.

_Princess_ , he opened the letter, and Emma felt herself go nearly lightheaded with relief. He'd never used that term when he wasn't teasing her, and he'd never tease her if he didn't still love her. Killian would never be so cruel.

_Princess,_

_Before I can tell you of my adventures, my new companions, or my studies, I must tell you one thing first: I love you._

_I think of you constantly, Emma. You are my first thought upon waking, and I fall asleep in my hammock to memories of your face and your kiss. I dream of you at night and during my waking days everything I do reminds me of you. My comrades are doubtless tired of my bringing your thoughts and opinions into every conversation. They have taken to groaning every time I mention my lass back home, Emma. It's all good-natured though. You know I'd never let another man speak ill of you._

_I could tell you all my thoughts- how often I think of the colour of your eyes or the shape of your mouth. Or I could tell you how every night I imagine you lying beside me, your head on my shoulder and your hair in my mouth. I might tell you that I have tried several times to capture your likeness on paper, but have learned to my new friends' amusement that I have no talent for drawing. I could tell you all these things, but my supply of ink and paper would would run out, and my hands themselves would fail before I had told you everything, and that even before I had written every time I simply think about how very much I do love you._

_And so, rather than bore you with tales of your loveliness, with which you must already be familiar, and because I promised you tales of adventures, I shall write those instead._

_The captain of the Hood is, as Liam intimated when first I received my commission assignment, a man by the name of Robin. He is also, as Liam said, a good man. He is an excellent swordsman and a canny sailor. He is, personally, seeing to my training with a blade._

_Liam and your own father, of course, have taught me the rudiments of swordplay over the years, but Captain Robin (his surname is Locksley, but there seems some pain for him in that title and he prefers the unorthodox combination of rank and familiar name) has taught me several things that your father and my brother have failed to teach me and I hope that the next time all three of us can spar, I will be able to best them for the first time. Do not tell your father I said so, however. I look forward to surprising him._

_The training does remind me that I am a soldier and that I could be sent to battle or war, and so I pay attention with all my heart so that I will be sure, each time I face battle, that I will return home to you._

_Most of the junior and senior officers aboard are like me- commissions purchased or handed down through the family. Most of the enlisted seamen are of a different sort, however. Most were pressed into service as recompense for some crime against the crown- usually theft, though some for light piracy, and other non-capital offenses. I admit that, early on, I was given to look down on these members of the crew, rough as they are, thinking myself far more noble and upright than they. I said something of the sort (rather impolitic of me, I must say) to the Captain, and he told me his own tale:_

_Captain Robin had been a pressed man at the beginning of his career. He'd been a thief and a highwayman and had been given the choice of the noose or the King's service. He chose the service and, as you will have no doubt gathered, has risen well through the ranks. At home he has a wife and a wee lad, likenesses of whom he keeps in his cabin. His wife, Marian, is lovely and his son is a charming imp._

_I should like a good likeness of you when next I return to your side. Is there anyone in Storybrooke who might be compelled to make one, do you suppose?_

_The reason I tell you of Captain Robin and his lady is to remind you of a conversation that you and I had some time back when you asked me if a pirate or a highwayman can have a happy ending in the stories. Robin was a highwayman, and yet he has made his happy ending with Marian and wee Roland._

_And so I think that you, my darling Swan, will have your happy ending as well, whether you become a highway robber or a circus performer. I would ask, Emma love, that you do not become Pirate, for I would be forced by my oath to my king to seek you out and cut you down, and it should tear me apart to have to chose between you and my duty. Do not ask it of me, if you would._

The letter continued in like vein. He told her of some of his new companions: a man of his own age named Will Scarlet and an older man who had been pressed from a life of piracy by the name of Smee.

_They are teaching me to cards,_ he wrote _, a game called poker which involves convincing the other man with whom you play that you hold better cards than he, though you have not seen his cards, nor he yours, and so neither of you can be sure. I think, my dear Princess, that you would be excellent at this game, and I would tremble to play it with you._

Killian, better than any other person that Emma knew, was aware of her uncanny ear for the truth. When she was lied to she could, with near-unerring accuracy, hear the untruth. She hated being lied to, and it had, early in their friendship, led to several fights between Killian and Emma.

He told her a story of catching a shark off the side of the ship and tales that his new mates had tried to frighten him with about mermaids. Finally, on the last page, he answered the question that had been burning in her from his first words.

_We will reach our first port of call tomorrow. The other men are greatly looking forward to the taverns and brothels. I shall join them in one form of release, but not the other, fear not my love. I have spoken with Captain Robin so that I could offer you this information here in my first letter: we shall return to Storybrooke in four months' time, and I shall see you again. Until that time, think on me, my darling, and know that I love you._

_With all of my love, I am ever yours,_

_Killian_

~?~?~?~?~

After the first, Killian's letters came more regularly. Every two or three weeks there would be another waiting for Emma.

After the second letter, which Emma read at the breakfast table, Snow White and David learned not to give her the letters in the morning, for if they did, her chores would not get done. She would read the letter through three, four, or five times, then her head would be in the clouds and she could focus on nothing but Killian for hours after. She would eschew food, even her favourite pies, cakes, and cookies, and she could not be compelled to stop smiling for anything in the world.

Amid this dreamy infatuation, however, Emma was stretching and growing. On days that she didn't have a letter to read, she left the farm as soon as her chores were done. Some days she went into the forest, deeper than ever she'd been before- held back by Killian's concern for her well-being- and discovered adventures on her own. There were waterfalls to swim under, and rock faces to climb, streams to ford, and stones to skip across ponds or throw over and over again, testing her own accuracy until she could hit the exact same spot on a tree 50 paces away seven times out of ten.

When she did not go alone to the woods, she went to the village. Without Killian constantly at her side, Emma realized that she was lonely and sought out the company of the other citizens of the village. There were several young people in town of an age with her, and it pleased her parents as she met and attempted to befriend them.

Emma found herself uncomfortable with the boys in the village. They tended to look at her as though she were a lovely ornament, or a sweet for the taking. They did not talk to her as Killian did- as though she were a person with thoughts and opinions and ideas.

She had once managed to draw the carpenter's son, August, into a conversation about art (she had been asking around the village to find someone who could do a miniature of her to give to Killian when he came back to Storybrooke) explaining that she thought she would prefer a charcoal drawing in black and white rather than a painting, for while a painting could catch the colours of life, at such a small size, the details were lost in a painted miniature that could still be captured in a sketch.

August had blinked in shock. "I… erm… I don't really know anything about art one way or another."

Emma had been disappointed, thinking she had found someone with whom she could talk of anything her magpie mind took hold of, as she could with Killian, but she'd nodded understandingly nevertheless. Not everyone could be Killian, after all.

"What do you know about?" she asked, not willing to give herself back over to solitude.

"Carpentry," August had said, shortly. "And horses."

"I love horses!" Emma had enthused. "But tell me of carpentry, I don't know anything about it."

"It's no conversation for a girl." August had sounded annoyed.

Emma was so incensed at this analysis that she had opened her mouth to object, but August had cut her off again. "Besides, I'm far too busy to talk just now. I agreed to let you stay here and watch me, not allow you to talk at me all day. You can only stay if you can keep quiet."

Emma had left promptly. It was not her first experience of men who wanted women seen and not heard, and she had no patience for it.

Though the boys held no great appeal to her, Emma did not completely fail to find companionship among the citizens of the village.

There was a girl named Belle who was a year older than she and reminded her mightily of Killian. She always seemed to have her nose buried in a book, but unlike the most common type of voracious reader, when interrupted, Belle was happy to talk at length about what she had been reading. Emma often missed Killian's recounting of his storybooks, and while Belle's preferred books tended to be more in the line of historical treatise than adventure stories, Emma was happy to listen to her passionate exegesis.

There was another girl in the village of Emma's own age, a wee pixie of a girl named Tinker Bell. She was a troublemaker, taking great joy in foolishness and pranks. It was Tink who quickly became the author of all of the trouble that the three girls found: it had been Tinker Bell's idea to dam up one of the small creeks in the forest behind Emma's family's cottage to carve out a swimming hole, and then her idea to sneak out one night and swim naked in the light of the moon and stars. This idea had gone off brilliantly until Emma's father had caught her sneaking back to her room in the dim light before the dawn and sentenced her to extra chores and no sweets for a week, and Belle had caught a horrible cold which had laid her up for three days.

It was Tink's mischief that introduced Emma to yet another friend on the village, though not one of her peers.

Emma had received another letter from Killian in which he had waxed most enthusiastic about his fencing lessons at the same time that Belle had been reading a tome on the history of ironmongery. Tink's vivid imagination had clung to these topics and determined that the girls must make a trip to the blacksmith.

Belle was easy to talk into nearly anything. She was sweet-tempered and biddable, in general, though there was a hard core of steel in her, which had been known to show itself at odd moments.

Emma was generally more stubborn than Belle, but she was always looking for distraction from Killian's absence, and thought there could be no great harm in visiting the blacksmith, even if he was known for being a taciturn and short-tempered man with little patience for children and would probably not talk to them.

"The worst he can do is tell us to go away," she had said when Belle had mentioned this.

"Of course!" Tink had agreed, brightly.

Emma had known Tink was lying, but had assumed that the blacksmith was perhaps even more dour than she had yet heard.

They had gone to the forge and found it empty, the smith was away for his midday meal. Emma and Belle had wandered the shop desultorily, looking at the crafts on offer, though nothing interested them particularly. It took some minutes for Emma to notice that Tink was not similarly aimless. She was looking through piles of iron and steel with determination until, finally, she let out a grunt of pleasure.

"Come look at this!" she called to the other girls, who joined her immediately.

"This" was a long, double-bladed knife honed to a wicked edge. It would have been largely unremarkable, save that the edges waved all the way down the near 18-inch blade, yet kept their razor's sharpness.

"I saw him making it a few weeks ago," Tinker Bell said, holding it up for the other girls to admire. "I wanted to see it again."

"That's completely impractical," Emma said, frowning at the blade. "You'd never be able to sharpen those curves."

"You can sharpen a curved blade!" Tink objected. "Sabres and scimitars and cutlasses are all curved."

"But that's one long curve. You can get the full sweep of the whetstone or steel along a smooth curve in one motion, you see. I won't say that a knife like that _couldn't_ be sharpened-" Belle's expression seemed to indicate that she would _like_ to have said that, but did not want to risk Tink's ire, "but it would be difficult and time-consuming."

"It's amazing how he made the steel wave like that and got a honed edge on the curves in the first place," Belle said, forestalling Tink's further objections. "It's probably very expensive and you should probably put it down."

"Right on all counts, sister."

The gruff, annoyed-sounding voice came from the back entrance to the forge and caused all three of the girls to jump in surprise.

None were as badly shocked as Tinker Bell, however, who let out a shriek and flung the dagger in her hand in the direction of the unfamiliar voice.

The short, dark-haired man with the grim mien didn't even shift his stocky form as the razor-sharp dagger flew several feet wide of him, he only sharpened his glare. Tink had responded to the glare by making one more squeaky noise and running out the front of the forge, leaving Emma and Belle staring bewildered after her.

The blacksmith ignored the remaining girls completely, reaching down to pick up the blade from the floor.

"She's scratched it and nicked the blade," he said to no one in particular. "I should make her pay for it."

"She doesn't have any money," Emma said, honestly.

"You wouldn't make the sisters pay for it, would you?" Belle asked. Tinker Bell had been an orphan, raised by the sisters in a convent just outside of town. They were good, kind women, but had no idea how to raise a young girl and mostly treated Tink like a beloved kitten- allowing her to come and go as she pleased and accepting her disruptions to their peaceful ways with tender amusement and occasional light discipline.

The mention of the sisters wrought an odd change over the blacksmith's face. He didn't smile- his wood-hard visage was not made for such soft expressions- but his face gentled somehow and his grey eyes took on a dreamy cast.

"No, the sisters do their best with her," he grunted. "I wouldn't ask them to pay for her mistakes."

"She could work for you here?" Belle suggested next. "Work off the price of the ruined dagger?"

That elicited a bark of un-amused laughter from the man. "Tinker Bell? Work here? The trouble she'd cost me is more than that dagger is worth! I'll take it as a loss."

"Well what about us?" Emma asked, gesturing between herself and Belle, who gave her a surprised look but, to her credit, did not demur. "We came in with her and might have stopped her."

Belle snorted, and Emma privately agreed with the unspoken skepticism. Keeping Tink from doing exactly as she pleased was beyond anyone's capabilities, so far as Emma knew.

"And what good could you be?" the man asked, narrowing his eyes at the pair of them. "A waste of my time and more trouble than you're worth, that's all."

Emma hadn't intended to fight for the opportunity to serve Tinker Bell's sentence with the short-tempered blacksmith, but his dismissal of her abilities caused her own innate stubbornness to flare.

"We could sweep or organize your shop," she argued. "We could hand you tools as you needed them- serve as an extra pair of hands. And we can _learn_!"

The blacksmith scoffed. "I could train a cat to sweep and organize my shop, sister, and the cat'd be less trouble."

"It's fine, Emma," Belle said, softly. "If he doesn't want our help…"

"I can tell if someone is lying," Emma declared, making Belle sigh. "If you hired me on, I could listen when people were haggling with you and let you know when they really had reached the highest they could pay."

"How?" the blacksmith demanded, his forehead furrowing.

Emma shrugged. "I just… know. Someone says something, and I know whether it's true or not- it's not perfect though. If someone believes what they say is true, or they don't know better, then it doesn't work. Someone can't tell me 'it's going to rain today' and I'll know the future because of it, do you understand?"

The blacksmith said nothing, just continued to glare at her.

"Try me then. Tell me some things that you know the truth of, and I'll be able to tell you."

For a long moment, Emma thought that he wouldn't- that he would just send them away, but after a long moment, he finally spoke."

"I'm called Leroy."

Emma shook her head. "That's a lie."

If the man's face were given to smiles, he might have done so. As it was, there was some lightning to his features, and an odd gleam to his eyes.

"My _name_ is Leroy," he amended, and Emma nodded at the truth of the statement.

"So what are you _called_ then?" Belle asked.

Leroy the blacksmith hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. "Grumpy," he admitted.

"Can't imagine why," Belle deadpanned.

"It's a mystery," Grumpy agreed.

Emma laughed. "All right then, are you convinced?" she asked.

He looked at her for a long moment, then shook his head. "You could have picked that up from almost anywhere in the village."

Emma shrugged. "So try me on something harder."

For the next 20 minutes, Grumpy quizzed her on blacksmithing skills. She always knew when he'd lied, and Belle was grinning by the end- it was clear that the blacksmith was impressed.

"So, do you believe me? Will you take me on?" Emma asked. It had finally occurred to her at some point that she hadn't come to the shop intending to work for the blacksmith, but after putting so much effort into it, she felt like it would have all been wasted to leave without his agreement.

"How do I know you didn't just get that from a book then?" Grumpy asked, and Emma and Belle both groaned in frustration.

"Fine!" Emma yelled. "If you don't want to take me on, don't!"

She grabbed Belle's hand and tugged, storming out of the shop with her friend on her heels.

"Wait!" the blacksmith called, halting the pair at the door.

Emma and Belle turned to face him, only to find him looking at Emma with a peculiar expression on his face.

"I have six brothers. Is that a lie or the truth?"

Emma frowned. She looked at Belle who obviously had no answers for her, then back at Leroy whose face was unreadable and answered him as best she could.

"I honestly don't know. It's both. It's a lie and it's also the truth. I don't know what that means, sorry."

He was looking at her with a peculiar expression on his face. "It means that whatever it is that you can do, it works. No one could have told you that."

Emma cocked her head at him, trying to determine what it meant- that part-truth, part-lie- but he offered no explanation.

"You can start working here tomorrow."

Emma nodded solemnly, wondering what had just happened to her. "I'll be here as soon as my chores are done at home."

In the next few weeks, Emma became a fixture at the forge. She asked questions of the taciturn blacksmith and argued with him as it seemed no one else in town was willing to do. He didn't smile when she was there, but his weathered-wood face seemed to soften as she worked around him, filling the forge with her conversation.

When a customer came into the forge, looking to buy a blade or piece of ironwork, she would take herself to a corner from which Grumpy could see her, and find some quiet work to do- sweeping or organizing or polishing the blades so they glowed. As the blacksmith and his customer would talk, he would glance over at the girl who would occasionally shake her head or nod- never looking at him- at something the customer would say.

After some weeks, Grumpy had to admit that Emma had more-than paid for her friend's mistake. He no longer lost customers for attempting to push them beyond what they could pay, nor did he under-charge those who could afford to pay more. He told Emma so, and said she needn't continue to come to his shop.

"Do you want me to stop?" she asked, sounding slightly hurt."

"It hardly matters to me. You're less trouble than I expected, but surely you want to see your friends rather than spend your days in a filthy forge."

Emma shook her head. "I'll go if you want, but I like working here."

Grumpy agreed to let her stay, and between her friendships with Belle and Tinker Bell, her work at the forge, and her own chores on the farm- now more difficult since Killian was gone- the weeks for which she waited for him flew.

~?~?~?~?~

Killian stepped off the deck of The Hood and onto the docks of Storybrooke only to be nearly knocked off his feet by a projectile of green and gold that hit him in the centre of his chest with the force of a cannonball.

This impact was accompanied by feminine giggles and masculine murmurs, but Killian had no attention to pay anything but the delightful armful that it had been too long since last he had seen.

"Presumably that's Killian," he vaguely heard a girl's voice say in the direction from which Emma had come.

"Well, if it isn't, he's going to have a lot of questions when he does arrive," came a different girl's voice.

"Oh aye, that's Jones." Will Scarlet's voice was all suppressed laughter. "And that'll be Emma, I take it."

"It is. Since they don't seem likely to come up for air anytime soon, we'll just introduce ourselves. I'm Tink, and this is Belle."

"Will Scarlet, and this is Jefferson, and that's Peter there."

"A pleasure. You don't suppose we should throw a bucket of water at them, do you? Grumpy knows not to expect her today, but Emma's parents had thought to see them before nightfall."

Killian finally lifted his head when a large hand clapped him on the shoulder.

"You know, lad, the things they say about sailors don't necessarily need fuel. Now introduce your captain to your lovely lass."

Killian's spine straightened to attention a minute too late as he realized that Captain Robin had been watching him reacquaint himself with Emma. He looked up to find that his captain didn't appear annoyed by his technical insubordination and was, instead, grinning down at him.

"Erm, Captain Robin, this is Miss Emma Swan. My…" Killian trailed off, looking for the word to describe Emma.

"Aye, your sweetheart. We've heard of her a time or two." Captain Robin turned to bow to Emma. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, m'lady," he said with a teasing glint in his eye. "We had all begun to fear for young Jones here. A man can go quite mad at sea without female company and we had all begun to think perhaps you were just a fever dream. For all that, having now seen you, I can think of many madder things a man might do for a face like yours, my dear. Do be gentle with him this week, won't you?"

Emma's mouth opened in abject confusion and Killian knew she was about to start asking questions which would make Robin and the other lads laugh and become even more indelicate. "Aye sir," he said before Emma could get a word out. "Thank you sir. Do pardon me for leaving the ship before my captain had officially dismissed me, sir, but the impetus was very great."

"I suppose we can let it slide this once, Ensign, though not a second time," Robin said, with a teasing grin. He then turned to the rest of the crew, assembled on the deck and dock and shouted, "you are all dismissed for four days. Use them well, gents!"

~?~?~?~?~

Killian's spoon scraped the bottom of his third bowl of Snow's stew. Before he'd even finished lifting it to his mouth, she was reaching for the pot to fill his bowl again.

"Do they not feed you enough on that boat?" Snow asked, sounding as worried as if she were truly his mother.

Killian put his hand over the top of his bowl to stop her filling it a fourth time. "Aye, Miss Snow, they feed me on the ship. Our cook just isn't nearly as good as you are."

Snow looked pleased and passed over a basket of rolls for Killian who laughed.

"I'm stuffed to the gills, I promise. Feed me like this the whole time I'm here and I won't fit back into my whites!"

Snow looked ready to object, but David patted her arm to calm her.

"Tell us of your travels, then," David said, leaning forward to again fill Killian's cup of wine.

No one seemed to notice that Emma was practically vibrating with frustration. She desperately wanted to take Killian and leave her parents miles behind them. In some part this was because of the way her blood had been buzzing under her skin since she had found her way back into his arms, and a desire to explore that novel sensation. In greater part, however, it was her desperate desire to just _talk_ to him. To tell him everything she had thought and done and learned and seen since he had left. She wanted to bind him back to her life as he had been since she was small.

For all Emma felt she must be glowing with that desire, no one else seemed to be aware of it as Killian responded not to Emma beside him, but to David across from him.

"We have scarcely traveled at all- we have not left the kingdom, and are spending all of our time training and drilling. There are several new officers other than myself, and Captain Robin is kept busy getting us all up to scratch."

"You have been to port though- Emma has received letters from all over the kingdom," Snow encouraged.

Killian smiled. "Aye, we set in every few weeks to re-supply and take a short respite, but a port town is much the same as any other. The true differences come when you know the people, the gossip, the stories. We don't stay anywhere long enough to learn those things though."

"That sounds lonely," Snow said, reaching across and patting Killian's hand.

He shrugged. "It might be if not for my mates on the ship. Like brothers, we are, both the good and the bad. Sometimes, after some weeks at sea when we can't escape each other I'd like to throw them to the sharks, but I know they'd jump off a cliff for me, and I for them."

"Do you see sharks often?" David asked, latching onto this odd comment.

"Oh aye, all the time. Sharks and dolphins. Have you ever heard of the shrieking eels?"

David's eyebrows raised. "I thought those were the stuff of fairy tales."

"As did I!" Killian said, warming to his topic, "and yet we saw them some weeks back. The older men say there are mermaids and sirens at the edge of the world as well. It will be a year of training at the least before we're sent on such a mission, but I look forward to seeing them."

"But they say mermaids are dangerous!" Snow cried, sounding horrified.

"Aye," Killian whispered, "but it's all dangerous out there." He spoke quietly and did not look at David or Snow or Emma. Instead he stared down into the dark depths of the wine in the earthenware cup he cradled in his left hand as though it held deep secrets. "The sky and the sea could kill you on a whim, or the ship herself. Miss the slightest sign of fog, the barest hint of a rock, or the pitch that spells a huge swell of wave, the first hint of wood rot, and you're lost. And then there are the creatures- shark and squid and eel of course, but even the peaceful ones are dangerous. We were on our way here when we found ourselves amid a pod of whales. Four and five times as long as the ship they were. You could feel them bumping against the side as they swam by. They didn't even notice us and with but one wrong move they'd have capsized us and nothing for us to do."

"Why go back?" Emma asked, her voice scarcely above a whisper. "Why do it if it's so dangerous?"

His eyes were the colour of the summer sky, fringed with lashes so dark he might have coloured them with kohl.

"It's my duty and my honour to serve my king," he said, seriously. "But more than that… I think the horizon has been singing in my dreams all of my life, I just didn't know it. The sea is where I belong. It's the most beautiful thing I've seen in all my life… nearly."

~?~?~?~?~

"You were quiet at supper," Killian said as he and Emma walked in the starlit night to the stable where his room was still kept for him.

Emma said nothing as she kept pace at his side, close but not touching.

"You're quiet now," Killian noted as the silence stretched between them. He stopped and turned to her. Emma stopped as well, and turned, her face shadowed in the dark.

"What is it, Emma? Speak to me. Please?"

He thought, as the silence stretched between them, that she wouldn't, and the thought nearly broke his heart.

Since she was seven years old, she had told him every one of her secrets. It had been the hardest part of the past months without her- not knowing what she was thinking or doing. Not knowing what she was feeling. Not having her to tell everything to. He loved his shipmates, as he'd said, but they were _new_ friends and would never know the scrawny ten-year-old who had thrown mud at girls, or the skinny thirteen-year-old whose voice had cracked every five words, or the uncomfortable sixteen-year-old who had first learned to shave or even the newly-eighteen-year-old wearing his naval whites for the first time, with tears in his eyes over his brother's sword. They saw only the trained swordsman who had arrived on the Hood, not the bruised and battered novice at the end of David's sword he had been for so long. They saw the man he had grown into, not the surly, lonely, stubborn lad he had come from.

Emma had seen all of those things, and she had loved him anyway.

All the relief that had flooded him as she had flown into his arms on the dock seemed to drain away as her silence continued to stretch. Could it be that Emma did not love him enough to stand the distance?

"You _love_ the sea." Emma's voice in the dark caught Killian by surprise and made him jump, even as her choice of subject confused him.

"Aye," he said, not sure what was happening but aware that there was something dangerous and delicate between them suddenly, and if he was not careful he could shatter it so easily.

"I'm a farm girl, Killian."

"You're a princess, Emma," he murmured, but she waved this away, her hand pale in the dim starlight.

"I'll be sixteen soon and I'll have never once in my entire life been farther outside of Storybrooke than the convent. And you're seeing these amazing, beautiful things- whales and mermaids and distant lands. And you're learning everything- to fight and to lead and to serve. And I don't know that I'll ever be able to compete- to bring you home again to me time and again- because I'm a farm girl, and I've never in all my life loved anything as big and powerful and compelling as the sea."

"Oh Emma," Killian said, finally understanding. He took a step closer and put one large, warm hand on her cheek, cupping her face as he had cupped his wineglass at dinner, looking into it the same way- as though it held answers to all his questions. "Don't you know, Love? The sea may be the blood in my veins, but you are the beating of my heart. It's a beautiful, terrible adventure, but so are you. Just as easily as the Hood could be capsized by one of those great whales, so could you destroy me with a single word. A single flick of your wrist, Emma Swan, and I would drown."

"It's the same for me," she said, and he relished the feel of the soft skin of her cheek moving against the hard callus of his palm. "When I first thought you weren't going to write to me, I thought that I would shatter into a thousand pieces. I tried to make myself hard- make myself ice because I didn't know how to be iron. I tried to make armour around my heart so that it couldn't be hurt."

"Don't," he whispered. He had, as she had been speaking, moved closer and his mouth was hovering above hers, only inches away. "Don't guard your heart from me, Love. Hear this now, Emma Swan: I will always come for you."

And then he closed the distance between them and was kissing her. Somehow she tasted different in the starlight than she did in the late-afternoon sunlight on the docks. Like the first time he had ever kissed her, she tasted of meadow grass and gingerbread and when she opened her mouth to him, lowering all her defenses, he surged forward for that taste of home that he had craved and dreamed of for months.

His hands trailed over her, one buried itself in her hair, and one pressed into the small of her back, forcing her breasts against his chest and hips aligned. He was at once frustrated and relieved by the clothing between them. He wanted, badly, to lay her in the meadow grass and see her clad in nothing but the starlight, but he knew it was too soon. For one thing, Killian knew that David would put him out if he debauched the older man's daughter like that. For another- and more importantly- he knew that they weren't ready. The thing between them- so precious and beautiful and shining- was delicate and new and she was so young.

He pulled his mouth away from hers, but rested his forehead against hers, breathing her air.

"Besides," he murmured, gently sliding his stubbled cheek over her smooth one to speak into her ear, savouring the way she shivered as he did, "you love big, terrifying, and impossible things as well, don't you? Those stories you love? How's a man ever to compete?"

The breath of her laugh gently blew the hairs on the back of his neck making him shiver in turn.

"You don't have to compete with fairy tales, Killian. They're just fictions that live in my head."

"Aye, Love. And the sea is vast and cold and dangerous. And you are small and warm and safe and home."

She leaned back to look into his eyes, silver in the starlight. "You said you belonged on the sea."

"Aye, it's true. But you are home and I'll always come back to you, like the North Star, Love."


End file.
